Conference Reflections. Network Building

On May 19 I hosted the 41st Tutor/Mentor Leadership and Networking Conference held in Chicago since May 1994. About 90 people attended. I'll be posting photos in the albums section on the Tutor/Mentor Forum and I'm adding presentation slides to the agenda page on the conference web site.

While I host these conferences as part of the on-going strategy of the Tutor/Mentor Connection (read here), I don't focus all of the attention at the conference on my own goals. Rather, this is an opportunity for others to share their strategies and expand their ideas of tutoring and mentoring. Thus, I was pleased when John Hosteny, Director of the Corporation for National and Community Service’s Illinois Office, Used his welcoming remarks to provide an overview of the T/MC's goals and strategy.

Prior to the conference we used Twitter and other social media to build attention for the conference and various speakers. I encouraged participants to use their own blogs to show what the would be talking about. In addition, I've encouraged participants to do their own reflections. Below are a few links to these articles:

Post conference:

Article introducing Tutor/Mentor Connection, written by Dominica McBride, CEO, of Chicago intermediary called Become.

Article about volunteer growth, written by Mark Carter, President of One80. Second article posted Sept. 4, 2014

Storify report showing Twitter conversation, created by Interns at Becoming We the People.

Charlene Dolan, Tutoring, Mentoring, and PBL

Illinois Mentoring Partnership, (Facebook Page)

Bishop Steve Braxton, posted this photo on Facebook and posted this article on his blog


Pre conference:

This is Kelly Fair's Blog article. Kelly is founder of Polished Pebbles

This is a blog article by Eric Davis, Executive Director of GCE Lab School.

See how City Harvest Headstart Ministry talks about the importance of the conference on their home page. Photo above shows Mitchel Sholar of CHOOM and Dr.

Here's a link to The Black Star Project newsletter. Each issue this week has included a message about the conference.

Others are also sharing information about the Tutor/Mentor Connection

Here's a blog written by E. Wilson, titled The T/MC Links Library: A Must-Use Resource for Tutors

Here's the I-Open blog, where two of my articles have been shared since January 2014.

I'll use this article as an archive for reflections from the May 19, 2014 conference. If you write one please send it to me and I'll post it here.

The next conference will be November 7th. Sponsors are needed. Workshop presenters can begin to contact me with ideas.